-Though more tragic, the stadium accident was not the only architectural bad news to emerge from São Paulo this week. Yesterday, a fire broke out at the Oscar Niemeyer-designed Latin America Memorial, which houses a large auditorium and a number of cultural artifacts caught on fire, and pictures from the interior of the building reveal that the damage was extensive.

-In an effort to protect the rights of LGBTI individuals in the Americas, this past week the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) created a Unit on the Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Intersex Persons. While the IACHR has long been an important instrument in bringing awareness to and investigating human rights violations in Latin America, it has not directly addressed violent acts and other forms of persecution against the LGBTI community. The potential importance of this new institution should not be understated, as it will actively investigate reports of human rights violations against LGBTI persons throughout the Americas, even while also providing an arena for activists to make the issues facing the LGBTI community more visible.

And these protests before and after the bus fare announcements get at the heart of why the protests are not likely to just disappear with the concession of lower fares for public transport. Yes, the fares were the superficial cause of protests in São Paulo last Thursday, but by the weekend, it was clear they were just part of broader demands that included anger at government spending for the World Cup, the disconnectedness of Brazil’s political elites from the citizenry, the police’s brutal and disproportionate use of force against demonstrators, and numerous other issues. Indeed, both the United Nations and Human Rights Watch now asking the government to investigate the police’s excessive use of force against protesters, making clear that these issues are not going away just because bus fares went down.

Indeed, the connection between soccer and police violence is seeming to become intractable. In protests in Rio last Saturday, police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets, even chasing protesters (and non-protesters) into the subway system. And again yesterday in Fortaleza, we witnessed a similar experience, even after it was clear that police violence played no small part in the rapid expansion of protests throughout the country earlier this week. This seems to be because soccer and police violence are interrelated. Protesters angry at the $13.3 billion spent on preparations for the World Cup gather at the most obvious symbols of that excess: the stadiums themselves. Meanwhile, the police have nowhere to retreat when protesters show up, even as they try to cordon off and protect the stadiums and to prevent protesters from entering no matter what the cost, both for the sake of Brazil’s image and for FIFA’s own interests. And when FIFA Secretary-General Jerome Valcke claims that “less democracy is better for organizing a World Cup” and praises Putin’s Russia for maintaining “less democracy,” it’s clear where FIFA stands on Brazilians taking to the streets, an attitude Brazilians themselves are not likely to welcome. And thus, the expenses of the World Cup and FIFA’s presence in the Confederations Cup this year and World Cup next year will continue to fuel anger and protest in Brazil.

Additionally, the recent demonstrations have reminded a new generation of Brazilians that organizing, publicly protesting, and making their voices heard can and does have very real effects, and provides a powerful way to shape democracy in Brazil. For a country that hadn’t seen such mobilizations since the early-1990s, that is a powerful lesson indeed, and one that a new generation of Brazilians is unlikely to forget, just as those who took to the streets to demonstrate against corrupt president Fernando Collor in 1992 still recall their role in the eventual resignation of the president.

Thus, with deep-rooted issues and inequalities still endemic to Brazilian society, and with the new lesson of the power of popular mobilization, the likelihood of the popular movement that we’ve seen in the last week seems unlikely to suddenly disappear completely. Some temporary victories have occurred, but they haven’t resolved Brazil’s bigger problems even while they’ve reminded Brazilians of the ways that they can shape the path of their country and their government. As thousands of Brazilians have uttered, in the streets, on Twitter, and elsewhere: “the Giant has awoken.” And it’s hard to see that giant demobilizing or forgetting the lessons of June 2013 anytime soon.

While many Brazilians are celebrating the opportunity to host the World Cup for the first time in 64 years next year, the renovations have had a devastating impact, as the story of Elisângela reminds us .

Elisângela wasn’t home when authorities arrived without warning to tear down her house on Pavão-Pavãozinho hill in Rio de Janeiro.

Her 17-year-old daughter answered the door and was told that the property was going to be destroyed at that very moment. Panicking, the girl called her mother […]

Elisângela ran back home, tried to reason with the men, ask for some time to find another home, but it was no use. In a few hours, all that was left was debris. This happened in early 2011. To this day, Elisângela has not been compensated nor relocated. Her daughter had to go live with her grandmother, while Elisângela still searches for a new home.

And while government officials insist that actually improving the favelas surrounding World Cup sites is too expensive and that it’s better to just tear down their homes and force them to relocate, actual experts have a somewhat different perspective:

[A]ccording to the Rio People’s World Cup and Olympics Committee, engineers that have written technical reports about areas like the Pavão-Pavãozinho have pointed out that doing construction work to restrain or strengthen the slope, in order to eliminate the risk of slippage, would cost even less than relocating the families that live in the area.

It shouldn’t be surprising that government officials and others are willing to disregard the basic needs of the city’s urban poor, though, forcing them to relocate in the name of “development” and “improvement.” That has been the case since the early-1900s, when favelas developed on the city’s mountainsides as elites forced the urban poor out of downtown areas in order to make the cityscape look more European, a process that continues as once-devalued lands suddenly gain importance to the wealthy without any consideration of the socioeconomically marginalized who lived in those areas. Though this particular story took place last year, it’s just one case of hundreds (if not thousands) of people, including indigenous peoples, being evicted from their homes in the name of an international sporting event. It’s another sad reminder that the socioeconomic marginalization of Brazil’s urban poor is not something that’s just a part of its urban past, but a process that continues unchecked into the 21st century.

-Puerto Rico’s Supreme Court has upheld a ruling that prohibits gay couples from adopting children. The judges ruled 5-4 that only mother-father relationships were appropriate for children, marking a significant setback in equal rights on the island.

-Finally, FIFA appears ready to finally use technology to improve futebol/soccer, as the 2014 World Cup in Brazil will employ goal line technology to confirm goals. The issue came to the forefront when Englishman Frank Lampard clearly scored a goal that did not count in a match against Germany (though Germany went on to win the game 4-1, Lampard’s goal would have made it 2-2).

-In a step towards equal marriage rights, Uruguay’s Chamber of Deputies overwhelmingly passed a bill that would allow gay marriage and would permit couples to decide whose surname goes to their children in what order (thus helping equalize what has culturally been a patriarchal practice). The bill next heads to the Senate, where it is also expected to pass.

-While the image of indigenous peoples as inherently better stewards of the environment is a highly-charged and problematic image, that does not take away from the fact that indigenous groups have become important actors in environmental conservation in the 21st century, as Peru’s Achuar people remind us.